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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Twokinds -- manga

I've never really liked manga before. It's not that I had anything against it, it's just that I didn't like anything I read.

Then I discovered (or rather, rediscovered, since a friend introduced it to me years ago but I lost interest quickly) Twokinds.

Twokinds is an online manga by Tom Fischbach. In the first panel we meet Trace, who has amnesia and can't remember who he is, but who is known by everyone he runs into. And it seems that in his previous life he may not have been such a great guy...

This is one of those stories that starts out with a small cast of characters just trying to live their own lives, but eventually snowballs into a proper adventure with love, betrayal, and everything else that makes a good story.

One of the awesome things about Twokinds is that it's another way of looking at racism, but it does so by adding non-human characters to the cast. This was no accident, as I found out when reading Fischbach's FAQ: "I wanted to write a story involving issues of race and what it means to be a person. I decided using non-humans would cause a greater contrast for the issues and make things more interesting." And believe me, he does a really good job at examining issues around racism.

But why take my word for it that Fischbach does a great job? You can check it out for yourself in the following links.